Integrating Your Offline and Online Marketing Methods

Friday, July 16th, 2010 by Angela Stringfellow

Assisted living facilities frequently make the mistake of segregating their online and offline marketing efforts, considering them two entirely separate entities. Learning how to integrate your online and offline efforts delivers a more cohesive and consistent message, enhances your brand recognition, and boosts your ROI (return on investment).

An obvious way to integrate your marketing efforts is to include your facility's website url on business cards, letterhead, and other printed collateral. It's also very important to ensure that your messages are complementary; for example, if you send out a mailer to promote a community event, your website should reflect the same information. Why? Word-of-mouth is still a powerful component of marketing, and news of your event may spread throughout the community. Someone without a printed mailer will probably visit your website for the details, and might get frustrated when they don't find what they're looking for.

An even better way to integrate using this example is to send out a teaser mailer, and direct people to your website to get the rest of the details. Why? You're creating a trail, in a sense:

Mailer directs them to your website.

Your (professional, frequently-updated) website has all the details, and they look around (seeing pictures and descriptions of all the fun and exciting happenings at your facility).

They visit your facility for the community event you're hosting.

Now, they've had three separate contacts with your facility and you've begun to build a relationship. Those visitors shouldn't be directed to your home page, however, unless you've customized your home page to emphasize information related to this promotion. If possible, create a custom landing page for the purposes of your promotion that lets your visitors know they've reached the right place. Display the necessary information and then lead them to explore other areas of your website.

This is, of course, the tip of the iceberg as far as ways to integrate your online and offline marketing campaigns. When developing your marketing campaign, consider all components as one cohesive unit and plan how it will all tie together.